Oblivion Episode 7 - Full Moon Fever
by Gabriel Seraph
Summary: This story is inspired by Organization XIII. Great liberties have been taken with names, places, etc. in order to create as original a story as possible. The full moon is approaching, and with it the effects of Serum Seven will be manifested in a new body - that of Saix Claymore, who will now have to deal with his newfound bloodlust quickly. AU, with some OC's, moderate violence.
1. Chapter 1

AN: As usual, I would hope that you aren't coming here having not yet read the previous installments in the Oblivion series. If you haven't, I strongly suggest you go and begin at the beginning, in order to properly enjoy this one.

Episode 7 - Full Moon Fever

Chapter 1

Claymore House

Saturday evening, October 27, 6:34pm.

_The sun is setting at last, and soon Linda will be taking the pissaladiere out of the oven. I love it when she cooks the food of my native land. What a wonderful combination it is, southern French food with southern French wine. White wine, of course. Red wine with the meat, and the white wine with the fish. Being outside of the old country is no excuse to engage in uncivilized behavior. We are not savages. Fine food and fine drink, but especially wine, is what separates the man from the beast, _non?

"_Mon cher_, dinner is almost ready," said Linda, as if on cue. "Would you like to open the wine? It's a very excellent year, this one."

"But of course," Saix Claymore responded. "What are we having tonight?" he asked, as if he didn't already know.

Linda smiled and opened the oven, revealing the medium-sized pizza-like pie inside. "Another one of your French favorites," she said. "_Pissaladiere_."

_My heart is beating really fast. A little too fast, but that is probably the anticipation talking._

The pie of onions, garlic, olives and anchovies with anchovy puree sat steaming on the counter as Linda cut it into slices and served the slices, leaving behind approximately half for the kids.

It was a delicious meal, as usual, because Linda was already an excellent cook even without the assistance of the high-tech oven.

_So why do I feel so wrong? Why do I feel the need to...go berserk on something?_

Linda must have noticed that her husband wasn't feeling right, because she looked at him with much concern and asked, "Are you feeling okay? Is the food not to your taste?"

Saix stood up hastily and said, "_Excuse-moi._ I must use the bathroom." He tore up the stairs.

_Must run up there, fast, faster. _Mon Dieu_, why do I feel so ill? It is like there is a beast rising up out of me. Was it the food?_

_Of COURSE it was the food! Stupid smelly fish! They smell and taste so unhealthy! I need energy! I need to get out of here and...and..._

Coherent thought disappeared entirely as Saix's skin and hair stretched across his face, leaving a nasty X-shaped mark etched across there, centered on the bridge of his nose. His hair was sticking out behind him, behaving almost independently of its owner. His eyes gleamed brightly, wide open and taking in everything possibly in sight all at once, like a canine. As he shut off the lights, the moonlight filtered in through the open window, and he felt it on his arm. It charged him up, energized him. He was lunar-powered, instead of solar-powered like the house was.

_Luna Divine_, his brain fired off. Soon he started chanting it out loud, in a raspy voice completely unlike his own. "_Luna Divine, Luna Divine, Luna Divine..._"

Downstairs, Linda received a text from Ansem. "It works?" he was asking.

"Better than it ever did for Ray, if you can believe it," Linda responded.

She could almost see Ansem smirking as he delivered a witty response capable of making Horatio Caine grimace. "Must be the full moon."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Saturday night, 8pm. Tim and Axel sat in their room, just hanging out, not doing anything of any importance. Tim changed his guitar into an old-fashioned auto-harp and started playing some of his favorite rock songs on it, to hear how odd they would sound that way. Axel, almost supremely bored, merely lounged on his bed in his boxers, looking exactly like the lazy teenage bum he was. Despite this, though, he had enough energy to wave one of his feet slightly in time to Tim's music, especially when he started playing the very catchy "Panic Station."

Suddenly, for no apparent reason, Axel bristled, and goosebumps rose all over his body as he pushed himself up onto his arm, then pressed his ear to the wall. "Did you hear that?" he asked.

Tim stopped playing and said, "No, I can't hear anything with this right next to me." He held up his auto-harp, then played the "Madness" intro again to revert it back to its usual guitar form so he could put it away in its case, then he crossed the room and started listening to the wall the way his twin was doing. Sure enough, Axel was right - a faint thumping noise could be heard from the other side, followed by even fainter yelling. Tim turned to Axel, shrugged, and said, "Maybe one of the neighbors is having an argument?"

"Probably," said Axel, as Tim returned to his own bed. "Nothing to worry about, I guess - HOLY SHIT!" Suddenly, a small but lethal-looking shard of glass pierced its way through the wall, stopping just short of penetrating the fly of Axel's boxers and tearing up his genitals.

While Axel stared down at the shard, paralyzed with fear, Tim nonchalantly returned from the other side of the room, examined it, and cracked, "Guess the wall really likes you, brother." It was a testament to how terrified he was at that moment that Axel didn't try and slug Tim upside the head in response, or pull the glass out and stab him with it, or engage in any violence at all. Indeed, he was more preoccupied with making sure he didn't piss himself, and therefore didn't really pay attention to what Tim had said.

Rocky walked in and asked, "What just happened? I heard yelling, and..." He spotted Axel and the embedded glass, and whistled low. "Damn, that one almost FUBAR'ed you," he said, feeling a twinge of pain in his own crotch as he sympathized with his big brother's close call.

"Nothing to worry about, huh?" Tim asked. "Apparently not. What say we go ask around, see what happened?"

"I'll get my jacket," said Rocky, who left the room. Tim then turned back to Axel, who was still rooted to the spot, and pulled his pinky off the wall. Again, Axel was still so shocked that he did nothing to defend himself, so he fell over onto the floor very easily. Tim tossed Axel his pants and t-shirt, waited until he dressed himself, and then led his two brothers down the stairs.

But before they could leave the house, they saw a small dark energy glow shining around the edges of the front door. Sure enough, this soon vanished as the door opened to admit Xion Claymore, wielding her shiny black keyblade, and Lucein following her inside. They both looked very pale and terrified, as if they had just been attacked by somebody.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

A long, awkward silence followed the Claymores' entry into the house, and was eventually broken by Tim as he asked, "You guys heard that too?"

"Heard it?" snorted Lucien. "We did more than that, unfortunately." He held out his cell phone, on which he was showing a picture of a wall next to a staircase, looking just like the one right next to the five kids. Except the Nemos' living room wall did not have a message scrawled on it in black ink and ugly, raggedy writing. The message read, "Light and Dark shall coalesce."

"This was in your house?" Rocky asked.

"Uh, yeah," Lucien said pointedly. "Why do you think we came down here?"

Axel cocked his head as he looked at the photo again. "Whoa. Who would do this in your house? You guys get broken into or something?"

Xion shook her head. "I wish," she said. "You wouldn't believe who it was who did this. When the Nemo brothers merely responded with blank looks, Xion whispered, "It was Dad."

"No!" exclaimed Tim. "No way. Your dad's one of the most mellow people around. What the hell does this stuff mean, anyway? I mean, since when does Saix Claymore start writing on the walls like this?"

Lucien snorted again. "Apparently, since tonight. We think he might have gotten infected by something he had to clean up at the school. Either way, he's never gone completely off the rails before. Totally unlike him."

"The writing was nothing compared to the other stuff," said Xion.

"What other stuff?" Rocky asked.

Xion sighed heavily. "He, uh, just went really crazy. Ranting about something called Luna Divine."

"Maybe some prostitute he's been sleeping with on the side," Axel joked. "God knows how cold your mom is to him."

"Hey, go screw yourself, man!" cried Lucien, pushing Axel across the room in his anger. Tim and Rocky stepped in and separated the two before they could really come to blows, and Tim said, "Guys, this is no time for 'yo-mama' jokes. Or fighting. Xion, keep going. What else happened?"

Xion took a breath, then went on, "Then he started breaking the bathroom mirror, for some reason. Man, the way he threw the pieces through the wall...I didn't even know that was possible."

Tim and Axel looked at each other as they remembered the shard of glass still stuck in the bedroom wall. Then Tim turned back to the Claymores and said, "So, I'm guessing you guys aren't going back to your place tonight?"

"Hell, no," said Lucien. "We're hoping it's okay with you guys if we stayed here for now."

"Duh," said Rocky. "Of course you guys can stay here. Xion, you take my room." When Xion opened her mouth to protest, Rocky cut her off and said, "Better if you had a bed to sleep in, and I can at least guarantee mine's clean. Can't speak for these two, though." He gestured to his big brothers, then added, "Especially not Axel."

Lucien then spoke up. "I think we get it, little dude. Okay, I'm sleeping on the couch here. Don't wanna put up with some possibly filthy Axel-bed."

"Well, where're you gonna sleep, Rocky?" Tim asked.

Rocky shrugged. "Doesn't matter, really. I got a sleeping bag. I can go anywhere."

Tim sighed. "Okay. But not in your own room if Xion's staying there. 'Cause in addition to 'yo-mama' jokes and fighting, the last thing we need is a sex scandal." Rocky rolled his eyes, and Tim went on, "Can't speak for how trustworthy you are, can I?"

"You sure your parents won't mind?" Xion asked. "I mean, we don't exactly have permission to be here."

"Trust us, they're not gonna notice or care," said Axel. "Not even if we have a, um, sex scandal, as my geeky blond brother so eloquently puts it."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Sunday morning, eight o'clock. Saix Claymore, somehow still fully clothed in spite of the bizarre phenomena of the previous night, stirred very slightly. He was sprawled across the floor on the topmost landing of his townhouse, his head on the threshold to the bedroom and his bare feet dangling over the edge of the stairs. Realizing with a sudden flash of clarity where exactly he was, he scrambled upwards quickly and dusted himself off. _So undignified,_ he thought harshly. But no sooner than he had gotten up than he had to sink to his knees again, as he was instantly hit with a pounding headache like he hadn't experienced since the day after he'd tried pot in college.

Mon Dieu, he thought. _What happened last night?_

Linda clambered up the stairs, carrying a loaded laundry basket. "Oh, Saix," she said, noticing her husband. Then she did a double take. "Are you okay?"

Ever the jokester, Saix muttered with the barest hint of sarcasm, "What did you feed me last night, Linda?"

"Are you sick, dear? What happened?" Of course, Linda knew precisely what had happened, but she still had to keep up appearances all the same.

"It's nothing too bad," Saix said, rubbing his head tenderly. "Just a little hangover, I guess."

Linda sighed sympathetically. "That's the last time I serve thousand-dollar wine with our dinner, then."

"No, you don't have to get rid of the fine wine just because of this! Perhaps it was a touch of overindulgence, nothing more." Not that Saix desperately needed the fine wine or anything. It was just one of life's little pleasures that he'd long since gotten used to.

"If you say so," Linda said, carrying the laundry into the bedroom and folding it. Saix carefully descended the stairs, not once noticing the red Sharpie message he'd left on the wall the night before. He shouldn't have been able to see it, because Linda had already wiped it clean just minutes earlier. NemoConTech's failed experimental glass cleaner was a very efficient cleaner of everything else. He sat on the couch downstairs, and tried to piece together the nonexistent memories of the previous night. Just how exactly did everything happen? Previously he had been under the impression that no human being could possibly be as stupid and irresponsible as those three dopes from _The Hangover._

Could they? He certainly hoped not, especially now. What if he'd found himself with a tiger in the house instead of Linda? Or his Einstein hair inexplicably missing?

Mentally praising the fact that her husband had possibly the biggest, most powerful weirdness censor in his brain, Linda fired off another text to Ansem, saying that he had no memory of the night before. Smiling to herself, she then continued folding the laundry. _All in a day's work_, she thought. _But the day's not over yet. Tonight will be another test. _She finished the laundry, then wondered to herself, _Now, where have my children gotten to? I hope they didn't see anything last night. The plans would probably be all shot down if that happened. Even if Ansem says to have faith, I wouldn't in that situation._


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Lucien woke up in the Nemos' living room and immediately made his way into the kitchen, where he started grabbing up as many metal implements as possible. Knives, forks, sporks, even a pasta strainer. He didn't realize the racket he was making until he turned around and realized he was sharing the room with Axel, Tim, Rocky, and Xion, all of whom were looking at him oddly. Putting the pasta strainer down, Lucien said, "What if we need to defend ourselves when we go back over to the house? It's not like we got a medieval armory in the basement, y'know what I mean?" He unconsciously waved at the floor as he said this, but nobody paid attention to the superfluous gesture.

Rocky and Axel exchanged glances. Xion chewed her lips. Tim, however, stepped forward and pulled a long kabob skewer from the drawer, followed by a cookie sheet and leather straps to stick it over his shoulders with.

Axel laughed. "The skewer? Really? We're not going after one of your stupid Buffy vampires here."

"Damn right those Buffy vampires are stupid," Xion said, out of nowhere. "There's a reason why she got to kill scads of 'em after a while." Now everyone stared at Xion due to the blatant bizarreness of her non-sequitur. "What? I'm trying to stay sane here!"

Axel frowned, but then entered the kitchen and rifled through the drawer until he found something that took his fancy - a metal rod with an egg-shaped round stone attached to one end. "I dunno what this thing does," he says, "but this looks like it'd make an awesome weapon."

"Odd implements are always the best weapons," Tim said sagely.

The three oldest boys left the kitchen and made their way to the front door, but Rocky and Xion made no move. "Aren't you gonna get weapons?" Tim asked.

"We got our keyblades, remember?" Rocky pointed out.

"Good point," said Lucien, "but who knows what Dad's like at the moment? For all we know a keyblade will only make him madder."

Xion frowned. "What about you guys taking things from this place? Won't your mom be mad?"

Lucien laughed sharply. "Yeah, Mrs. Nemo is such a scary beast. What's she gonna do, stare at us until we turn to ice? She's no killer. Not like Berserker Dad out there. Now are you gonna come with or not?"

They came with, slowly edging their way up the sidewalk towards the fourth and final row house. Xion carefully swiped her keyblade against the door to open it, and Tim led the way in with his skewer pointed straight forward. Lucien followed, then Axel, then the two keyblade bearers.

But there was nothing to be seen, except Saix lying on the couch, eyes closed, asleep. He certainly didn't look like a crazy man at the moment.

"Where's the graffiti?" Tim whispered.

Lucien pointed to the wall, only to see that it was now blank. "Huh. Guess Mom musta cleaned it already."

"With what?" Axel asked. "Industrial-strength bleach?"

"Sorta," Lucien said, nodding. "Dad always brings some home with him from work, he's gotta use it to take shit off the walls in the bathroom."

Saix started muttering in his sleep, shocking the kids briefly. Silently, they filed out the door and returned to the Nemos' house.

Linda came down the stairs, having just heard the door open, and she started looking around the living room. Nobody but her husband, and he was asleep. So who had gotten in here? At least they wouldn't be able to see anything damning. Then she'd have to eliminate them, and she definitely didn't relish that at all.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

"Well, that solved our mystery, didn't it?" Axel griped as they reentered the Nemo house. "Now what are we supposed to do?"

Lucien went back to the kitchen and returned the various metal implements he'd collected to their proper places. "Question," he said. "Any of you guys got a camera?"

"You mean to hook up in your living room to keep an eye on the wall?" Tim asked. "Um, no, not me. Rocky?"

Rocky shook his head. "No, but I do know where we can get one."

"Excellent," said Lucien. "Where?"

"Fry's, of course," said Rocky. "Ain't you guys got brains?"

Axel snickered. "Well, if we do, they certainly aren't as malfunction-y as yours."

Tim pulled his mouth into a frown with his fingers, largely to avoid bursting into laughter at Axel's (probably unintentional) Buffy speak. "That's all the way on the other side of town," he said. "Any of you got a car?"

"Dad lets me borrow his all the time," said Lucien. "Come on, let's go." They drove down to Fry's and spent a good long time trying to find a halfway decent camera.

"Xion, we don't wanna see Dad go crazy period," grumbled Lucien. "Why do we wanna see it in HD?"

Xion frowned. "If we don't get a good camera we won't be able to see any message on the wall. It'd be too grainy. You wanna be able to see what he writes, don't ya? Just to prove it to these guys?" She gestured to the Nemo boys, who were standing by idly while the two Claymores argued over what camera to buy.

"Enough already," muttered Tim, stepping in and plucking the nearest camera off the shelf. HD, so at least Xion was satisfied. Lucien took the camera from him so he could pay for it, since he had the most money on him out of the five of them.

Back home, Lucien and Xion carefully positioned the camera behind one of the mantelpiece cameras, just out of the way enough that it wouldn't be seen except by those looking for it directly, but still easily able to capture the bottom of the stairs where Saix had written his message from the day before. Then Lucien went upstairs and loaded the software package on his computer so he could access the camera feed from there.

Xion returned to her own room, leaving Lucien alone. He removed his phone from his pocket and took another look at the photo he'd taken the night before. "_Light and Dark shall coalesce,_" the message read. It still made absolutely no sense to him. He closed his eyes, reopened them, and looked around. The room had gone dark, as it was now nighttime, even though, to Lucien's perception, the sun had been shining seconds earlier. He listened intently and soon picked up the sound of the door opening and shutting very quickly. That was the moment he and Xion had left the house the night before.

Lucien slowly slipped out the bedroom door and crossed over to the top of the stairs. A few feet below, his dad was busily biting his own fingertips and writing, in thin spiky letters, the message that Lucien would later photograph. Just as he finished the last letter, though, Saix looked up and spotted his son at the top of the stairs. He charged forward and slashed at his son, leaving three long, thin, ugly cuts across Lucien's arm.

Gasping in pain, Lucien jumped ahead in time eighteen hours, then ran into the bathroom and cleaned his arm up, before wrapping it in a long bandage and putting on a hoodie to cover his injury. _Huh,_ he thought as he did so._ Forgot to put on a shirt underneath it. Oh well._


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

At nine o'clock, Xion came into Lucien's room and together they sat back and watched the video feed of the living room and the staircase wall, waiting for Saix to strike again.

They didn't have long to wait. By ten, whatever had caused Saix to act up the night before had clearly activated itself again, because they heard loud bangs and scrapes as their father tore things off the walls, and then at 10:15 he stood on the bottom of the staircase and bit his fingertips, just like Lucien had seen the night before. Xion bristled at the sight of this and turned away for a couple of seconds. Saix wrote and wrote, and when he was done, Lucien zoomed onto the wall and read the message out loud. "_A Nobody is stronger than half a billion,_" he said.

"What the hell does that mean?" asked Xion.

"No idea," said Lucien. The next day, the Nemo boys came over after lunch (there was still no school while the earthquake and flood cleanup continued, and class wasn't expected to start up again until the first of November) had the exact same response, as he expected.

Tim frowned at the video. "So what do you think you'll do now? It's not like we can stop this from happening."

Rocky stood in the corner and muttered to himself. "Wait a minute," he said. "Lucien, could I see something on the internet?" Lucien stood aside so Rocky could take the mouse and find the site he was looking for - a list of moon phases by day. "Aha," he said. "See here, look what the moon's like today." He pointed to the screen, which showed a calendar for the year 2012 and, next to that day's date - October 29th - a white circle signifying a full moon.

"Full moon?" Axel asked. "Seriously, you believe in that crap?"

Xion chewed her fingernail as she thought about what Rocky had shown them. "He's right," she said. "It has been a nearly full moon lately, and...hang on. Lucien, what was it Dad was saying when he went...wackadoo?"

Lucien looked up as he realized what was being implied. "Luna Divine," he said. "Maybe you're right. Maybe it is because of the moon."

"How is this happening?" asked Tim. "None of this makes any sense."

Rocky eyeballed Tim as if to say, "Hello? Water clones? Firebending Axel? Keyblade? What more do you need to know nothing makes sense anymore?" Then he spoke out loud. "So are we gonna try and do anything to stop him?"

"How?" asked Axel. "I mean, seriously, what can we do?"

Lucien stared at his computer screen. "Guys, go get your metal things from your kitchen," he said. "We'll need all the strength we can get to subdue this guy."


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Lucien and Xion, alongside the Nemo boys, sat locked inside his room while they waited for the sun to set, the moon to rise, and Saix to go batshit insane once again. Soon, the telltale bangs and scrapes told them it was time to make their move.

It seemed as if Saix knew they would try to catch him in the act, because as soon as they made their way to the stairs, he was nowhere to be seen, but a message had been freshly scrawled on the wall. It read, "_Red and blue. One shall rise, one shall fall._" But the kids had long since given up caring what the messages were, or even what they may have meant. All they thought of in that moment was capturing the berserk, deranged man running around the house.

Rocky slid across the room and closed the curtains quickly, to limit the amount of moonlight entering the room. Xion slid to the other side and listened at the entrance to the kitchen, before silently signaling Lucien, Tim, and Axel to make their way down the stairs. Axel was the one who took the initiative first, entering the kitchen and swinging the metal rod with the stone at the end.

Luckily, Saix moved at exactly the last minute, otherwise Axel may very well have caved his skull in with his swing. Of course, no matter where on the body one is struck with a heavy stone, it is going to hurt. A lot. And one is definitely entitled to get pissed off as a result.

Which is exactly what Saix did. Yowling in pain and rubbing the bruising spot on his arm, he attempted to headbutt Axel, but missed and bashed into the cookie sheet Tim was shielding himself with. Bouncing backwards and stumbling over, Saix could barely defend himself as Lucien pinned him to the ground with his feet and tied his arms to his sides with a bunch of yo-yo strings (they hadn't been able to find any proper rope in any of their houses, so they made do with some of Rocky's old toys).

"Got him," panted Lucien. "Now, could you guys help me lift him up the stairs?"

"Where are we gonna take him?" asked Tim.

Lucien led them upstairs and into the hall closet right at the foot of the upper staircase. The closet was surprisingly sizable, with more than enough room to contain Saix as long as he was...whatever he was.

"Is he gonna be okay?" asked Tim.

Xion climbed up the stairs and looked at the closet door. "I sure hope so," she said. "If not, well, you should keep your weapons ready."

Axel glanced down at his stone-tipped rod. "I still have no idea what the hell this thing is," he said, "but I think it's a bit too dangerous for this sort of thing."

"What do you think would be less dangerous, then?" Rocky asked. "Maybe a knife? Or a shuriken?"

"I said less dangerous," grumbled Axel. "God, it's not like I'm a murderous psychopath, dude! Get real."


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Linda watched the live feed from the living room as her and Ansem's kids bested Saix and pulled him up the stairs, hogtied with yo-yo strings. She turned to Ansem and asked, "Hold the phone. How come we're not eliminating them? I thought they weren't supposed to know about any of this yet."

"And if they don't know now, when will they ever know?" Ansem pointed out. "They will need to know eventually."

Linda frowned. "But what if they don't like what they learn? Somehow I doubt any of them will be willing to go along with this."

"Relax," said Ansem. "They're not even necessary for the plan. I just wanted a bit of a challenge. After all, what happens if there's nobody to stop this?" He typed on his keyboard and the preservation pod at the center of the room rose about three feet into the air. Underneath there lay a small hole lined with metal. Ansem typed in another sequence of keys and then, with a growl, a misshapen creature crawled out of the hole and into the elevator pod. Linda could faintly see the shifting numbers in the creature's skin. Zeroes and ones. Binary code.

"If there's nobody to stop this," said Ansem, "our little endeavor would become exceedingly boring. What we need is a decent challenge. And, this close to Halloween night, what more fun than something scary and creepy to fit the occasion?"

Linda sighed. "I suppose you want my son to help you out now?"

"Naturally," said Ansem. "Bring him out, would you, Braig?"

Braig nodded silently and opened a room between the break room and the elevator pod. The tall blond Lucien Claymore stood up and exited the room. Except this Lucien wasn't as tall as the one who slept upstairs, and he appeared about two years younger.

"Ten?" asked Ansem. "The time has come. Remember, this is nothing but a simulation. Are you ready?"

"Of course, Superior," said Lucien with surprising obedience, taking the proffered virtual-reality headset and putting it on. He stood in place and started making little gestures as he controlled the freshly-born digital creature, led it up and down the nighttime streets of Blancoville, looking for the first objective.

-End of Episode 7-


End file.
